


Natural Instinct

by Knightess_of_Ren



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: A what might have been fic, Because of reader, Dry Humping, Eventual Romance, Explicit Language, F/M, Finger Sucking, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kick-ass Reader, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Mild Smut, Psychological Torture, Rough Kissing, Slow Burn, Sorry Not Sorry, Survival, because how did Poe survive on Jakku?, but this fic isn't very long, but we knew that, it sounds so dirty but it isn't, so it isn't that slow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-07 23:14:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12851583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Knightess_of_Ren/pseuds/Knightess_of_Ren
Summary: Reader is a simple Jakku miner, who becomes unintentionally thrust into the war when she steps up for a Resistance Pilot named Poe Dameron. While she is horribly thrown out of her element, she begins to build a relationship with Poe, beginning to step out of her neutrality and into a new sense of belonging with the Resistance's poster-boy.





	1. The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hello and welcome! Thank you for taking a chance on this short fic. This story is a sort of filler for The Force Awakens, focusing on Poe's survival on Jakku post-First Order-interrogation up until we see him safe and sound with the Resistance once again. I love to read comments and see kudos, as well as interact with my readers. Please enjoy!

Mining in Cratertown had become a kriffing joke. If it hadn’t been, if operations hadn’t become as flighty as the sand, I wouldn’t have had to travel further west on Jakku’s unforgiving wastelands, and I certainly wouldn’t have found myself stuck in the middle of a First Order assault. If I hadn’t been hunched over from dehydration and heat exhaustion, I would have hightailed it immediately once I saw the X-Wing parked a little way up the Kelvin Ravine, on the outskirts of Tuanul. What was it Ergel had said when I had complained of the lack of work while throwing a can of Knockback down my throat?

_“Nothing good comes from Tuanul. Force worshippers, Jedi sympathizers. You’d do well to walk a long ways ‘round the Ravine.”_

Not that Ergel cared who worshipped what—he was friendly with anyone who could hold their alcohol—but anything that put any of us miners and un-allied Jakku scavengers at risk wasn’t worth the trouble. We wanted nothing to do with the Cold War. Nothing to do with the Resistance, or the First Order. But I hadn’t planned as effectively with my supplies as I had assumed, and so I found myself in Tuanul, the morning before a battalion of stormtroopers decided to pay a visit.

A great majority of the religious villagers had sprung up upon noticing the impending ships, blasters out, ready for a fight. Whatever they were willing to die for, I wanted no part of it. I ran in the opposite direction, dumping off a rucksack filled with gathered goods that ought to pay for my meals for a week. The weight was too much, and I hadn’t acquired a beast or a speeder with which to carry it. Sand billowed around huffing engines as I heard them land behind me, and the clunk of heavy boots against the ship’s ramps had me careening up a small dune. When I heard shouting far too close for comfort, I froze and turned to the source, where I saw the X-Wing’s pilot several meters away. He was running as well, a frantic orange and white droid hot on his heels, rolling small craters into the sand. If the insignias on his bright jumpsuit were at all legitimate, he was Resistance. So why the hell was he running?

I pulled away from it all and continued to move far, far away from the sharp squeal of blaster shots and the distant but obvious void when one by one, Tuanul’s villagers died. The sounds of boots and blasters were already far outweighing the sound of human life. And then the chaos was warped and swallowed within the sound of an explosion. It made the sand around my feet tremble and the heat blow a lasting breath against my back. The X-Wing was nothing more than a heap of hot, smoking metal. It didn’t matter. It was one more Resistance fighter down among an innumerable group of dead, not the first, and certainly not the last. But I still turned back.

The screaming had stopped. The village below the dune was crouching in bated breath around a masked black figure, tall and broad in the shoulders. Even from where I was, next to the remains of the destroyed ship, I felt his power. I felt the tendrils of raw, tainted energy flicking in the air even before I witnessed the blaster shot, still but writhing against an invisible force. I’d never seen anything so unnatural as that. Then there was the pilot, a tremble himself, his blaster arm forced down against his hip and his body frozen mid-step. This was beyond me, completely beyond a simple miner’s pay-grade. Nothing good comes from Tuanul. I wouldn’t call what I did next bravery; simply, it was idiocy.

I didn’t have a weapon—not that it would have made a difference—but I still slid down that dune, kicking up clouds of earth, creating enough of a disturbance to capture the masked man’s—if he could be called that—attention. Just the slightest tilt of his mask’s chrome embellishments, and I knew he saw me.

“Leave him alone!” I screamed at the expressionless visage.

There was a beat of silent apprehension, and then every blaster in the area was on me. I resisted the urge to hold out my hands in surrender. Out the corner of my eye I saw the pilot, still unmoving, along with the pale blue bullet streaking the sky. Damn.

The masked man in black—who I assumed was Kylo Ren; I was a Jakku miner, but I still heard the important rumors—motioned toward both me and the pilot, and we were drug toward him. I didn’t give the armored soldiers any trouble. I’d dug my grave, but I wasn’t too keen on just diving head-first into it. The pilot drug his sand-caked boots along, not really fighting, but not too eager either.

When we were both forced to our knees in front of Ren, I didn’t look at the pilot. Instead, I stared straight up the long legs of the First Order’s most deadly weapon. He was horrifyingly large; broad shoulders, towering, the air around him crackling so much that I couldn’t find it in me to pull enough breath into my lungs. Then he stooped, mask inches from my nose. He tilted his head back and forth between the two of us, maybe considering the most entertaining form of murder. I was such a kriffing idiot.

“Do you talk first or do I talk first?”

Okay, scratch that. I wasn’t quite up to par with the idiocy the Resistance pilot showed. I considered smacking him, but I could barely move for fear.

“The old man gave it to you.” Ren said, his deep voice laced with the barest metallic echo.

“It’s just very hard to understand you with all the…” the pilot waved his hands, “apparatus.”

“Search him.”

The pilot was hauled back up and patted down. I stayed put, preferring to stare down at the grains of Jakku’s earth, wishing I had kept running. Shouting did nothing. What did I change? Nothing.

“Nothing sir.” One of the troopers said.

“Put him on board.”

Ren turned his masked face down to me, tilting it softly.

“Put them _both_ on board.”

* * *

 

Despite being on our best behavior—or, at least, decent behavior on the pilot’s part—we were pushed and pulled down hallways of a First Order Battlecruiser. Kylo Ren had disappeared on his own transport ship after ordering the murder of every person in Tuanul. I hadn’t known anyone, not specifically, besides the dark-haired woman who had offered me water when I stumbled into the village. Regardless, I felt like a Sarlacc had wormed its way into my stomach and was slowly eating me from the inside-out. I was terrified on the inside, so much so that I felt blank on the outside. I went everywhere I was ordered without a second thought. It was all I could think of to survive.

“I’m Poe.”

It took several seconds for the pilot’s greeting to get through to whatever part of my brain was still functioning. I turned my face to him, blinking a few times. He looked… okay, meaning he didn’t look like he was walking to an execution. In fact, his eyes were bright. When I didn’t respond at first, he looked around the bridge we walked through, as if taking the place in with genuine curiosity and not indomitable fear.

The stormtrooper guiding me pushed me more roughly when my steps slowed a tad. His blaster poked against the small of my back, a simple but effective reminder.

“I’m… (Y/N).”

Poe nodded, smiled, and that was that.

Finally, we were dumped into a cell. I was a bit surprised that they would keep us together; it felt to me that isolation typically came with true imprisonment, but I had never actually been in this type of trouble, so what would I know? Our supposed cell also wasn’t what I would picture. It was dark, yes, and heavily unfurnished. The ducting lining and twisting the ceiling was uncovered, and the floor was unheated and void of any rug or padding. Bright red lights popped from each corner of the room, and I knew immediately that they were cameras. Off to the far-left corner was a chilly-looking chrome toilet, and I balked at the idea of having to relieve myself in front of Poe and whoever was manning the surveillance cameras. Luckily there wasn’t much in my system to get rid of. The last thing I noticed was the single bed in the far-right corner, which was rather more like a built-in shelf with a thin, foam covering.

I stood in the middle of the room for a while, the door the stormtroopers left through having long since merged with the rest of the wall, barely a groove to show its existence.

“You’d better rest while they let you.” Poe said.

He sat on the edge of the bed, pulling his boots off his feet. What was with this man?

“Do you get captured and imprisoned a lot?” I asked, unable to keep the snark from my tone.

He looked up with his broad eyebrows raised, a bit surprised I spoke up the way I did. My nerves were making me testy. I wasn’t usually the type for confrontation, but I was pissed at myself, and scared shitless. Anger seemed the safer option at this point. He considered me a moment and I considered him back, taking a moment to really see the person I stepped out of my relative safety for; messy brown-black curls, round eyes, a strong, square chin free of stubble. What I noticed most of all was how soft he looked. Or maybe soft wasn’t the right word. Whatever it was, it was nothing you found on Jakku. Everyone on the desert planet was made of some sort of stone, the sand constantly etching away at their surfaces. Frowning and exhausted was the natural state of being on Jakku; hard-eyes and an angry, stubborn resilience came with weathering the planet for many years. For someone who fought in a war, Poe looked decidedly less cauterized than anyone else I had ever met.

“This is actually my first time with the First Order,” Poe said, gesturing to the small, square room we found ourselves in.

“Well you seem to know the ropes.”

“The supposed ropes you get with the First Order are pretty damn short. I’ve been dealing with these assholes for a while now.”

I truly hoped the cameras were not equipped with sound as well.

“Well then what do we do?” I asked.

He looked up at me with those frustratingly bright eyes and smiled. It was an actual smile too, one with teeth. That’s another thing you don’t see on Jakku much.

“You rest, (Y/N),” he said, patting the empty spot on the bed. “Within the next thirty minutes or so some stormtroopers are going to burst in here and try to torture information out of me. I’m not going to give it to them.”

“Then what happens?” I said, deciding not to sit quite yet.

“That’s a good question.” Poe said, cracking his neck. “I’m sorry, you kinda throw a wrench in the typical torture scheme. I don’t know what they intend to do with you.”

I tried not to panic, and I thought I was doing a pretty good job of it. But somehow Poe must have seen something of the new and realized fear that encapsulated me, because he reached out and grabbed my hand. I started at the contact. He had taken his gloves off at some point, so it was just skin, calloused and warm.

“Try not to worry,” he said, and I almost laughed out loud. “You don’t know anything. Do you have an allegiance?”

“No,” I insisted, glancing once at the nearest camera. “I was searching for places to mine outside of Cratertown. I only went to Tuanul because I needed water and some food and rest.”

“They will see your stepping in for me as a pledge to the Resistance. When they question you, you need to insist upon your neutrality. Although it's likely they will force you to pledge to the Order instead.”

There was nothing accusatory in his voice or gaze, as if he would understand if I chose to become loyal to the First Order to survive. I would have thought he would urge me to deny the First Order, even if it meant death. Looking at him, I was sure that’s what he would do.

“Thank you, by the way,” he said, giving the knuckles of my hand the briefest swipe with his thumb. It felt nice. I was amazed that I could feel even a grain of safety when I had no idea whether I would be dead by morning or not. “That was brave of you, stepping forward.”

“It wasn’t bravery. It was stupidity.”

A soft chuckle, and he released my hand. “You’d be shocked how often those two traits go together.”

Then there was a pause. Something in the way he looked off took a small bite from his buoyant spirit.

“Can I ask why you did it?” he said.

I didn’t answer. I don’t know for how long it was silent, but somewhere in that void between his question and my answer the door to the holding cell slid open, and as Poe had predicted, stormtroopers filed in.

“That’s my cue.” Poe said, standing and brushing down his flight-suit. He left his boots at the side of the bed. “See you later, (Y/N).”

Once again, his shoulders were roughly taken, and with them he was pushed out and through the doorway. Not one word was said to me, and in a moment I was alone, standing in the same spot I had planted myself on upon entry.

“See you.”


	2. Torture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reader has been captured by the First Order, along with pilot Poe Dameron. You don’t know what they intend to do with you, until you are brought along to Poe’s interrogation, and once again face Kylo Ren.

Poe returned twice in what I assumed was the same day, although time in space was a highly unreadable thing. The first time he was thrown back in, his upper lip was slit and his nose was crooked. I couldn’t bring myself to move until the door sealed itself.

“What did they do?” I asked, kneeling beside him.

He rolled onto his back, placing a hand on his forehead. “Threw me into the middle of a stormtrooper rabble. Turns out their boots are heavier than they look.”

“Where do you hurt? What can I do?”

Poe looked up at me and there it was again: that unbreakable grin. “Do you have experience resetting noses?”

I didn’t. I didn’t have experience doing anything along those lines besides compressing twisted ankles and spreading antiseptic cream on a cut.

“I don’t, do you?”

“I know a bit. We can give it a shot. My voice takes me back to when I was going through puberty.”

I giggled, and it surprised the both of us.

“What do I do?”

He directed my fingers with his own, placing two at the bridge where I felt the separation, and another two at the bottom so that I nearly plugged his right nostril. I felt dried blood stick to the pads of my fingers, mingled with drying sweat and the grain of sands brought from Jakku. I instinctively leaned to brace my strength into my hands, and smelt his tang. Both of us counted from three. I swallowed my nerves and pressed my fingers toward one another with as much force as I dared, and with a gruesome crack, Poe’s nose realigned. I couldn’t believe that it only took one try.

Poe leaned up onto the palms of his hands, sniffing. “Not bad, not bad at all.”

I was dabbing at the cut on his lip with the bottom of my vest soaked in toilet water when he was once again drug away to interrogation. That time I didn’t wait patiently. I paced, my mind a cacophony of worry and doubt and fear. What were they doing to him now? What would they do to me? And why for force sakes was I being ignored? The longer I waited for a duo of troopers to come for me, the more nervous I became. Part of me was willing to trade in my sadistic thoughts for some actual torture, if it meant I could just stop wondering.

Then they brought him back, worse off than before. His eyes were puffed up from harsh treatment, his whole face slick and violently red. Even underneath his tan, I could see the beginnings of bruises. When he face-planted on the floor at my feet, I saw small streaks of blood running from his nails down the tips of his fingers. Had they...? Had they actually stuck _needles_ under them? 

With nausea bubbling in the pit of my stomach, I hesitantly said his name. When I didn’t get a response, I gently flipped him over, his head flopping back onto my lap. He wasn’t unconscious, not yet, but his eyelids were twitching with the need to slip away.

“Hey,” I patted his cheek gently, making him blink. “Don’t sleep yet. Tell me what to do first.”

“This is nice.”

“C’mon, Poe, there must be something.”

He turned his head further into my lap, releasing the barest sigh. “I’m comfortable. Just stay here. Please.”

I sat there while he dozed off on my thighs. I wish I had something to lean against, but the bed was too far and I didn’t dare move. The most I dared do was shift my legs outward so that I was sitting on my butt instead of my heels. Poe grunted softly, but didn’t issue further complaint. Time slipped on without caring whether we knew it or not, and I was beginning to grow frantic. My throat felt like sandpaper, but oddly my body found somewhere within its small stores of water something with which to cry. I kept it as soft and quiet as I could, wiping away the tears before they could hit Poe’s cheeks. Like the kriffing fool I was, I let myself cry, when nothing had even happened to me. Where were Poe’s tears? With his expectant and easy-going attitude, I wondered whether he had ever cried in his adulthood. It wasn’t my go-to expression of emotion either, but faced with all the uncertainty, my brain must have figured that on The Finalizer was the perfect place to shed some tears.

When my nose began to run and another droplet slid away, I felt Poe’s finger dart up, swiping at the wetness until it was spread too thin to fall. I swallowed thickly. When had he woken up?

“You’re okay,” he said.

“Exactly.” I huffed, sniffling, trying to shove every emotion down so it would stop threatening the waterworks. “I’m fine, and yet I’m the one crying. I’m an idiot. I stepped out from behind that sand dune without a weapon, without a single clue as to why, and it didn’t make a damn difference. They would have captured you anyway.”

“Yeah,” he half-shrugged, shoulders grazing my legs. “But at least I’m not alone.”

Perhaps that was good for his sake. But what about my own? I didn’t care that I thought it. I was selfish. So what? I was selfish and I didn’t want to die for nothing.

After a moment of silence, I said: “You were trapped.”

“What?”

“You were trapped down there in Tuanul,” I expounded, leaning my face back until I could no longer make eye contact with him, even if I tried. “You had no way of defending yourself, and no matter how much you tried you couldn’t move. You didn’t budge. I guess I saw you and thought of myself.” I looked up at the ductwork, Poe still and silent. “I feel like I’ve been in a never-ending time-loop my whole life. Especially since my father passed. He was mining outside of Cratertown when the sand-shelf he was chipping at cracked and collapsed. He made it out before being crushed, but escaping forced him onto a sinking field and he was swallowed up by the sands. I’ve just been surviving ever since then, doing the same thing over and over. Feels a lot like waiting to die.”

Poe pushed himself off me gingerly, wincing when he had to bend at the waist. He probably had a broken rib or two.

“I know you regret it, and I don’t blame you,” he said, sitting beside me. “But I’m grateful for what you did. Even if it didn’t change this situation much.”

“Or at all.”

“Every Resistance member started out that way,” he said. “One day something just wakes up, and we get sick of watching the world pass us by. You’re no worse or better than any of us, no braver or more idiotic.” He grinned slyly, flashing white teeth. “I consider you Resistance by now. The problem is,” he gestured with his head toward the nearest camera, “So do they.”

Before I could respond, the door slid open once again. Two stormtroopers marched in, blasters held barrel up and pressed against their armored stomachs as protocol dictated.

“Ren has ordered you to be brought for further interrogation,” one of them said, utterly monotonous.

“Alright, alright,” Poe shuffled painfully to his feet, keeping his hisses behind his lips, though his crinkled nose showed it all. I continued to sit there, helpless to diffuse a situation that was growing ever worse with no end in sight.

“You too, prisoner.”

I looked up and saw the trooper on the right pointing his blaster at me, speaking volumes of what would happen if I refused. _Shit_. Poe looked from the trooper to me to the weapon, as if considering elbowing the blaster away. I shook my head, just in case he was really giving it thought.

With my head down, I was led deeper into the battlecruiser’s depths, going downward in elevators with the gun’s tip constantly trained on my back. I saw polished black shoes, pale boots and sanitation carts pass, but never looked up to meet the eyes of the owners. Likely, all I would be met with was sneers and hungry, murderous looks. At least with stormtroopers I didn’t have to see their faces.

Eventually, we were taken into an even darker room than our semi-cell, the walls encircling a chair made of cuffs and metal braces and a curvature just right to host a body. I watched warily as Poe was led to it, the troopers fastening him in first by the ankles, then the wrists. A lever was pulled, and he was tilted to a near-vertical position, head hanging against what little strength he had left. I was merely fastened to the wall facing him, wrists encompassed by heavy metal clamps, drug down with iron chains. Without another word we were left alone, barely having any light to see with besides the glow of what looked to be circuits lining the round room. To my left was something tall and—when I reached out to touch it—made of stone. From my angle I thought it might be a tubular basin, and the idea of water nearly had me salivating.

When I looked back to Poe, I saw him hanging limply against his restraints, passed out. All the movement and the shuffling through hallways had apparently been too much, and he had given in to exhaustion.

I sat stiffly, waiting, listening to the echo of First Order workers passing by on the other side of the room. Their footsteps were natural, from the orderly stomp of trooper boots to the confident tap tap of Generals, as if there wasn’t a potential torture chamber a wall away. Becoming so lost in the sounds—even focusing my ears on Poe’s strangled but rhythmic breathing—I was startled when the curved door slid open with a hiss of release. On the other side was Kylo Ren, just as darkly imposing as he was on Jakku. He turned his chrome-plated mask toward Poe, who hadn’t woken upon his entry.

“For your sake, I hope you have taken your imprisonment as a time to reflect upon your loyalties.” He said.

Before I could answer, he took two giant strides toward me and was kneeling. Face-to-mask, I saw every scuff and indent upon it, which somehow redefined that he wasn’t just a First Order figurehead. Ren was a warrior, a terrifying, absolute symbol of how much damage he and his affiliates could do. Was there really any hope against them?

“No, there is not,” he said stiffly, and I blinked in confusion. “Resisting the First Order is foolishness.”

“I’m not resisting,” I said, choosing to ignore the fact that he had pointedly read my thoughts. “I am neutral in this war. I have no loyalties.”

“You denied your neutrality when you attempted to interfere with the capture of information, the likes of which I have been searching for for a long time.”

“I’m-“

“Save your apologies,” he said abruptly, returning to full height. “They mean nothing to me.”

I said nothing more, not comprehending what I could possibly offer that would mean anything to Kylo Ren. The silence expanded, and all the while Ren gazed at me through his helmet, while I did my best not to fidget in his shadow.

“You regret stepping forward on Jakku,” he said suddenly. “I see that. Understand that what you did was the result of an instinct, one that has destroyed many people if not full Empires: sentiment. The First Order would serve you well as you serve it, in snuffing out that instinct.”

I said nothing in return.

“And if you do not understand that, know this, above all else.” He knelt before me again, cloak spreading so that it touched the tips of my fingers with the motion. “The Resistance pilot, he is nothing to be admired. If it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t need to be here. If he had complied, you wouldn’t have to experience any pain.”

_Shit._ “What are you…” I tried to catch my breath, keeping the panic at bay. “What are you going to do?”

“He won’t do a damn thing.”

Ren turned, and I looked over his shoulder. Poe had regained consciousness at some point, and was glowering hatefully. My sight of him was blocked when Ren stood, his cloak a cascade of black that kept me in the dark. His words rung through my head like a curse.

“I didn’t know we had the best pilot in the Resistance.” Ren said, the mechanics unable to hide his arid tone, as if this was just small talk over drinks. “Comfortable?”

“Not really.” Poe said.

“I’m impressed,” Ren mused, stepping forward. “No one has been able to get out of you what you did.”

“Maybe you should rethink your technique.”

Ren’s gloved fingers clenched and unclenched, flexing so tightly that the leather popped and squealed around his grip. Without another moment’s hesitation, he flung one of those hands back toward me. I slid back against the wall as if pushed by invisible hands that held the raw, unmovable strength of a Bantha. Ren turned back toward me, keeping his hand outstretched all the while. Suddenly I felt a prickling against my forehead, soft at first, and then increasing in pressure, as if a hundred needles were making tiny pinpricks against my skin. I tried to shift away from the discomfort, but my shoulders were locked in place. He was doing to me what he had done to Poe on Jakku, keeping me still, fighting lazily against my attempts to resist.

“You’re filled with fear,” Kylo Ren said, stepping slowly in my direction. “Fear of your circumstances, fear of me. Fear of yourself.”

Upon his last statement he moved closer, and those needles shoved their way through my skull as if passing through water. I balked, stuck between wanting to vomit and choking on a scream. Behind my eyes passed an overwhelming bought of images, from the poorly funeral I held for my father that day, the stacks of painted rocks I placed at the head of an empty grave, to the darkening pictures of myself walking through empty chasms, searching for resources, anything that would put food in my stomach. As the images flew they migrated from sight to something like bursts of color that felt like pain. Everything I hated, about myself, about Jakku, about my life, hit me like a stab to the gut.

“ _Leave her alone!_ ” I thought I heard Poe shout from a distance, but he was far away, past the muck of thought and horrible, horrible emotion that drug me under.

“You fear you will never be more than just a lowly Jakku miner,” Kylo Ren said, his voice in my head and outside of it, wrapping around me like cold chains that bit at the links. “You fear the isolation every day, the thought of waking up to be nothing more than a blip of a life in an entire galaxy. The only companionship you had was with your father, and then he left you. What is it about you that is just so, utterly… _useless_? You could die in an instant, and no one would care. It wouldn’t make a single difference to anyone, or to anything.”

“Stop, please,” I heard myself say. “ _Please._ ”

“You are weak, foolish, useless. Worth nothing. Meant for nothing. _Nothing._ ”

“Stop!”

_“She doesn’t know anything! Leave her be!”_

Instantly the pressure removed itself, and I fell against the sudden release, smacking my chin on the floor. I breathed once and felt my tears escape, then I was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My username on Tumblr is forged-in-black-ink; follow me to get more news on my other writings, and just because I'm fun and I don't bite (not too hard, anyway). Thank you for reading!


	3. Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Goodbye First Order; we won't miss you. This chapter will be the most in-line with the events of The Force Awakens, but afterward we are delving into Poe's survival on Jakku post TIE Fighter crash. Enjoy!

When I came to, I was back in the dim cell with the shelf-bed and the surveillance cameras, alone. I was on the floor, whether I had been dumped there or I had rolled my way onto the ground, I had no idea. Rising to sit, I felt the way I did when I often woke from nightmares. There was a great, gaping chasm inside my chest, the one I usually filled with thoughtless activity and survival instincts. This feeling was stuck somewhere between indifference and sorrow, as if I was turned inside out and no one was around to give a shit. My senses were heightened, causing me to notice with a new fervor the grit that coated every bit of me, as well as the tenderness of my chin. I wondered briefly what had happened to Poe, what he had been subjected to after I passed out, but I was too locked within my self-pity to dwell on it. I figured it was a side effect of my mind being practically shredded by Kylo Ren. Perhaps I wasn’t entirely fond of my life, but I hadn’t felt this much hatred and self-doubt since my father had been swallowed up by the sands.

I sat there for what felt like a very long time, when the door to my chamber slid open once again. This time a single stormtrooper, and behind him, a disheveled and downcast-looking Poe. How much longer would we be stuck in this kriffing game?

“This way, prisoner,” the trooper said.

I stood without a word. Part of me wanted to fall to my knees and pledge my allegiance to the First Order, just to stop from being shuffled in and out of torture chambers, fearing what came next. But I wasn’t entirely sure it would make a difference. My fate seemed to be linked with whatever Poe did or didn’t do. For attempting to save him, my life was now dependent upon his decisions. Maybe that was why Ren had ordered me to be brought along in the first place. I was meant to set an example for all; you don’t mess with the First Order.

Wordlessly the single trooper guided us around bends and wide balconies overlooking a gigantic cargo bay. When walls closed around us once again and we were alone in a hallway, I was pushed roughly through an open door. Poe and the trooper jumped inside and shut the door manually. I released a tiny squeak when the darkness blocked my sight, and jump a millimeter when a light flicked on overhead. We were in a storage closet. Cleaning bots sleeping away on low-power mode were stacked up each wall, emitting no light, no recognition of our presence.

Before I could say anything, Poe came forward and wrapped me up in a hug that was both gentle and engulfing at the same time. He smelt terrible, but I found I didn’t much care. It wasn’t as if I looked or smelled any better.

“Are you okay?” he asked, pulling away just enough to be able to search my eyes.

“Yes,” I said, albeit confused. I peeked around Poe’s shoulder to stare heavily at the trooper, who did and said nothing. “What the hell is going on?”

“We’re getting out of here.”

“What?”

The stormtrooper pulled his helmet off, and I saw the fear in his incredibly dark, wide eyes, the sweat that made his black skin glisten. He was nearly panting, as if we had been sprinting down the hallways.

“We need to get out,” the stormtrooper said in a rushed voice. “Before they notice the two of you have been removed without clearance.”

“He’s leading us out,” Poe explained. “And I’m flying us the hell out.”

* * *

The rogue stormtrooper had us flanked on either side of him, his blaster up and at the ready. Walking through the cargo bay, even with the flickering lights, cascading sparks, and heavy stomps against metal flooring, it was a wonder no one stopped us. To have a single stormtrooper escorting two prisoners was odd and—if it were up to me—highly unprofessional, but luck must have been on our side. That, or everyone was too stressed out by their own duties to care. Even the watchtower and communications station hanging out and above the hanger didn’t call out for our immediate stop. Although I knew that would change once we made an unauthorized escape in a TIE Fighter.

“Not yet,” the stormtrooper whispered to us as a group of generals clomping along in routine, rectangular fashion passed us.

The moment they were behind our shoulders, the rogue trooper urged us with a, “Okay go, this way!”, and we made a hurried break for a set of idle TIE Fighters, unmanned and unwatched. Poe and I were released from our cuffs and, without another moment of hesitation, Poe unlatched the roof of the Fighter and slipped his way down into the pilot’s chair. I, on the other hand, did hesitate. When the trooper took the gunner’s chair, I was left without a spot of my own.

“Uh, Poe. There’s only two seats…”

“Yeah.”

Poe reached up and grabbed my ankle, giving a firm enough tug to set me off balance. I tried not to yelp as I regained my footing and slipped down onto the chair the Resistance pilot currently occupied. Only there was no seat left to take, so on his thigh I sat, uncomfortably aware of how compacted the round chamber was.

“You can’t fly with me sitting on your lap!” I hissed.

“I could fly with a Tauntaun on my lap.” He stated, as if it was common knowledge, while flicking on various switches.

“Did you seriously just relate me to a  _Tauntaun_?!”

“No! I mean, it was a metaphor.” He looked up at me propped up on his knee. “A really bad metaphor!” When I said nothing in response, he said; “Trooper, can you shoot?”

“Blasters I can.”

“Okay, same principal,” Poe reached overhead to continuing prepping the Fighter for launch. “Use the toggle on the left to switch between missiles, cannons and magpulses, slider on the right’s to aim, trigger’s to fire.”

“This is very complicated,” the trooper said, so quietly it could have been to himself.

I couldn’t help but to agree.

Poe put both hands on either thruster, forcing me to slide in between his legs, and with a steady push forward the TIE Fighter began to sing to life. He turned the ship, aimed forward, and just as we were about to launch, our speed choked, and we were yanked backward.

“I can fix this!” Poe said.

I tried to maneuver out of his way, opting to lean away from most of the controls and look out the ship’s wide, circular windows. Behind us was what looked like a cable, still attached to the middle of the left-hand wing. Poe flicked a few more switches and forced the Fighter to pull forward, trying to release the cable and break it at the same time. By now, I knew that we were screwed. While the trooper behind us looked around the compartment frantically, generals, mechanics and white-suited soldiers below were noticing three idiots trying to steal a ship without really knowing how to fly it in the first place. And then came the blasters. One trooper even placed a mini cannon on a tripod on the floor, aiming it directly at us.

Red bolts of light shot outward, hitting our shields which—thankfully—Poe had known how to engage beforehand.

“Now’s a good time to start shooting, trooper!” I said.

“Right,” he said, gripping his controls with a little more certainty.

The Fighter squealed as it shot signature green blasts. Each duel blast exploded upon impact and projected outward, creating mini-craters in the hanger’s steel floor. I colored myself impressed when he aimed and shot up into the rest of the idle TIE Fighters before they could follow, and then turn his missile’s sights onto the watchtower. Two blasts and it was done for, the generals inside ducking quickly, as if that would do them any good.

“I got it,” Poe said, and with one more flick the cable released with a few sparks of protest.

The Fighter guttered a moment and then sped out the hanger as if glad to be free, a sharp sound following its sudden blast of power.

Poe made a sound that was between excitement and hysteria, then said; “This thing really moves!”

The velocity with which we were yanked into space had my back pressed up to Poe’s chest, to the point where I worried it might be uncomfortable. He didn’t utter a complaint through, switching our trajectory to fly beneath the Finalizer, where a much larger and more fearsome amount of firepower greeted us. I moved with the ship’s sharp zig-zags as Poe dodged emerald cannon-fire, keeping my center of gravity as steady as possible with only one seatbelt strap over my shoulder.

“Alright,” Poe said, “We need to take out as many of these cannons as we can or we’re not going to get very far. I’m going to get us into position, just stay sharp.”

Poe was in constant motion, flicking controls and maneuvering at a rate I couldn’t comprehend. Maybe he hadn’t been exaggerating with the whole Tauntaun thing. But the moment I was mentally applauding him became the moment I had to stop myself from shouting about his idiocy, when we began to weave around the cannons, just feet from the barrels.

“Up ahead!” Poe called out. “Up ahead, you see it? I got us dead center, it’s a clean shot!”

I heard the trooper mutter under his breath behind us, something obviously meant to ground himself, and all I could thing to do was reach behind the seat and grip the shoulder of his armor. He had gotten us this far; but he was obviously a nervous wreck.

“I got it,” he said lowly, positioning the slider.

When the cannon blinked bright yellow in his sights, he put a grunt of force behind the press of the trigger. Poe flew the Fighter through the fiery blast when the cannons were reduced to scrap metal. The three of us cheered, the trooper the loudest, screaming at us, asking whether we had seen the job well done.

Poe’s grin was infectious; “We saw it.”

That was the break we needed, and with a bit more careful maneuvering we were through, flying beyond the Finalizer as it tried to catch us with a few more shots. In the brevity of the moment, Poe grabbed my neck and pulled my face down to kiss my cheek, smacking his lips off my sweaty skin happily.

“Hey what’s your name?” he asked the trooper, while I tried to figure out ways to cool my body temperature.

“FN-2187.”

“FN— _What_?” Poe said, taken aback.

.“That’s the only name they ever gave me.”

“Those assholes don’t even give you names?” I asked. “They just number you like prisoners?”

“Well I ain’t using it,” Poe said. “FN huh? Finn, I’m gonna call you Finn, that alright?”

“Finn,” the trooper tested it out, “Finn, yeah, Finn, I like that!”

“I’m Poe, Poe Dameron.”

“Y/N,” I greeted him, not really bothering with a last name. It didn’t seem all that crucial, considering I was the last of my family left.

“Good to meet you Poe, Y/N,” Finn said.

“Good to meet you too, Finn.”

We flew freely for another minute, but then ventral cannon shots were hot on our tail. Poe dodged and skittered from them like a bloody prodigy, and Finn was getting better at knowing when to shoot and where to calculate his aim. The former trooper was able to take care of two, but two others were still hot on our tail. Then Poe made a dive down for the nearest planet: Jakku.

“Where are you going?” Finn asked, before I could.

“We’re going back to Jakku, that’s where.” Poe said.

“No—no-no, we can’t go back to Jakku!” Finn admonished him, “We need to get out of this system.”

“I need to get my droid before the First Order does.”

The droid, of course. The rolly-polly one I had seen in Tuanul, the one I hadn’t seen after Poe’s X-Wing was blown to smithereens. I had assumed the droid had been demolished along with the ship. Finn continued to argue, his fear of the First Order evident in how he nearly begged our pilot to go far away, as far from our escaped prison as possible.

“That droid has a map that leads straight to Luke Skywalker!” Poe said, unwavering.

“ _What?!_ ” I yelled above Finn’s mini-tantrum in the back.

It was that very moment of slipped focus that cost us a very deadly hit to the TIE Fighter. We began to spin out of control, one of our wings chipped and warped, the other barely stabilized.

“Shit,” Poe said, frantically flipping along the control panel, trying to regain some ability to control the ship. “ _Shit!_ ”

“What do we do?” Finn asked. “What do we do now?!”

Poe didn’t answer. He bit his lower lip, a new film of sweat along his brow. We were careening down toward Jakku’s atmosphere. Once we broke through it, our speed would become volatile.

“That shot splintered our engine,” Poe said, flicking the power switch up and down, the light behind it sputtering. “I’m losing all power.”

We were nearing the break in the planet’s atmosphere. I could feel the shift of gravity on the ship, becoming less of a result of the blast and more of an actual pull into a maddening, inescapable descent. Finn was panicking. I couldn’t express my panic the way I wanted to. My eyes were locked onto what I saw greeting me through the outside of the window. Would I die on Jakku’s surface? Just like my father? Just like my mother, whose blood seeped like water into the hungry sands, draining itself after my birth?

I always expected to die there. Just… not like this. Not on the brink of a newfound freedom I had never known.

“Listen up,” Poe said, going full commander in his tone. “I’m going to use the remains of our power to slow us down once Jakku’s atmosphere pulls us through. Hopefully I will reduce our speed enough to keep us from burning to death in midair. Once we are close enough to eject, I’ll flip the switch.”

“Ejector seats are only meant for one passenger each, Poe.” I said.

He looked at me, a grunt behind his teeth. He had them bared as he forcefully pulled against the thrusters. “I know. The parachute won’t hold both our weights for long. We will have a short window of time to eject, shorter than Finn. About a 10-yard difference between being too close to the crash site, and too far from the surface to land safely.” He held my gaze with his, daring me to look away. I didn’t. I reached out and put a hand over his, over the knuckles that strained and the veins that popped. I trusted him. Even in this horrible situation, I did. But that didn’t stop me from feeling like deadweight.

The Fighter broke through Jakku’s atmosphere, and it was with a sudden jolt that was so fierce I was yanked backward into Poe, my head hitting his shoulder harshly. The impact left stars blinking along my vision. We would be minutes in the air, if that. Poe struggled against the thrusters, pulling them back to their breaking point, fighting gravity. I wrapped my hands around his and put my own weight into it, bracing my foot against the Fighter to give me more force. The small bit of power the ship had left communicated with the engines to thrust backward, and so they did, although the difference was minute.

At what I estimated to be roughly 40 yards from the desert surface, Poe warned Finn that it was his turn to eject. The pilot pressed the dead-man’s switch and Finn catapulted upward through the Fighter’s hatch, the wind breaking in through our compartment and tossing sandy gusts around us. The hatch didn’t close again; the ship had lost all power.

“ _Get ready!_ ” Poe said above the torrent of air.

With his finger hovering over the switch, I watched him count under his breath, pressing down hard when our time was up. Only, nothing happened.

“No,” Poe said to himself, pressing the dead-man’s switch repeatedly, jabbing hard. “No—no, no! It’s jammed.” He brought me down more securely in between his legs, and I felt his heart against my spine, a rapid, trembling beat that set my own fluttering even faster. We were closing in.

“There has to be a manual override!” He said, searching on either side of the seat. I tried to help him, but I didn’t have the faintest clue what I was looking for. I’d never flown a day in my life, never set foot in a ship until the last few days. For the briefest moment, I thought about Finn. Poor guy. He didn’t want to go back to Jakku in the first place, and now he would be stranded there. He would probably die in the sands.

Too much damn much irony for one day…

“Hold on!” Poe yelled in my ear.

We were maybe 15 yards from the surface, but suddenly I was watching the Fighter hit the sands without me, the compartment slipping around my body as if falling through an invisible floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos, comments, all bring me such joy and a boost to my little writer brain. Thank you for reading!


	4. A Walking Jakku Survival Guide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe and reader have escaped the First Order, but now it's time to survive on Jakku. With the reader's extensive knowledge of the desert planet, they formulate a plan, and head toward Cratertown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The figurative tanning bed of sappy fanfiction romance is finally beginning to heat up. Emphasis on beginning. But hey, we're getting there.

When I opened my eyes, I was in the middle of a sea of unblemished desert, the sun high and hot through my sand-caked lashes. I breathed several times, feeling the length of my body from my toes to the tips of my fingers, searching every digit and organ and bone. Only once I felt secure in that I was only bruised, not broken, I sat up quickly. Who knows how long I had been lying there. The sun was already draining the water from my body as I felt it drip down my forehead. Poe, where was Poe? I didn’t see him, not sitting there.

Spitting out dust-encrusted saliva, I stood, testing the feel of my legs on semi-solid earth. I had been in space for what felt like so long, that transition alone would have been dizzying. Mix it with a crash-landing, and I was one step away from tumbling back to the ground.

Luckily, I hadn’t been unconscious for long. I saw that I was at the bottom of a small dune, tracks of what appeared to be my own body rolling down the hillside. I held onto the hope that Poe was at the top of the dune, and when I felt confident enough, stepped toward the crest. A few steps hurtled me into a run, and I floundered on hands-and-knees up the unsteady angle, feeling the heat of the sand as it bit into my bare fingers. Panting, I pulled over the crest, and there was the ejector seat, a parachute draped haphazardly across its side.

“Poe!” I shouted, running for it.

The seat was turned onto its side and Poe was still strapped into it, his head hanging uncomfortably across one of his shoulder straps. I didn’t dare move him, not until I knew he was okay.

“Poe,” I kneeled beside him, feeling for his pulse which drew a steady, even beat against his neck. “Poe, can you hear me? Wake up.”

His olive skin was flushed from the high sun, and I noticed for the first time that dark stubble was beginning to grow along his jaw and above his upper lip. Faint breaths delicately rolled the uppermost grains of sand along the surface of the desert. He didn’t seem to be in distress. But for me to know for sure, he had to wake his ass up.

“Poe Dameron,” I said fiercely. “If you don’t wake up, I’m going to slap you so hard it will rattle your teeth!”

Poe awoke with a start, groaning, sucking in breaths as if he had been holding them for the longest time. I angled my body to shield his sensitive eyes from the sun’s rays, and he blinked up at me.

“Y/N?”

“Are you okay?” I asked. “Move around. Is there anything broken? Are we at risk if I unbuckle you?”

Poe stretched out his legs and took it deep breaths, feeling for broken ribs. When I saw him wince, I started, but he assured me; “Don’t worry; same ones from when they kicked me around and called it torture. They’re getting better.”

“You’re okay, then?”

“As far as I can tell.”

I turned the seat onto its back as gently as I could with how heavy it and Poe were combined, and then I unbuckled him. Poe rolled off the seat and sat on the ground, rolling his neck, getting out the kinks.

“What about you, are you okay?” he asked, squinting against the harsh light.

“I feel fine. Bruised and shaken, but fine.”

“What about Finn? Have you seen him?”

“I just came to a few minutes before you did.”

“C’mon,” he said, rising to his feet gingerly before holding out a hand for me. “We need to go look for him.”

“We can’t just run off, Poe, not yet.”

“Why not?”

“We need to take care of ourselves first,” I said. “There are emergency supplies in the bottom of the ejector seat, as well as a parachute we could make good use of. We gather what we can carry.”

In the ejector seat compartment we found two bottles of water, a couple of instant food packets, two flares, and a comlink, which was useless considering there probably wasn’t a communications tower within 200 meters of where we were. The flares were unnecessary as well, but we decided to use them on our hunt for Finn, hoping to signal to him as a means of being reunited. With a jagged edge of the seat, I cut the parachute in half, severing the First Order insignia at a diagonal. The ropes I tied around the tops of the two halves of the chute, and we used them as makeshift knapsack. Then we searched.

Poe tried to guess the trajectory of where the seat had landed to where the crash site might be, but without markers and walking in an endless sea of sand, he couldn’t get a correct model in his head. We set off one flare in the early hours, calling Finn’s name, running our voices hoarse, and found nothing. Even the crash site eluded us, and after the last flare was set and the sun was beginning a slow, methodical descent, I decided it was time to give up.

“Poe,” I said softly, cutting him off when he shouted Finn’s name once again. “It’s no use.”

He turned to look at me, the exertion of our search written clearly on his face. “We can’t just give up on him.”

“Listen to me,” I said, stepping closer to him so that we were almost eye-to-eye. “None of us will make it out of this alive if we keep searching. I know this planet, Poe, and once something is lost, there is nearly no hope of getting it back. We could search days and get no closer than a couple of yards, and by then we would be half-dead of heat exhaustion anyway.”

Poe looks away, furrowing his brow.

I reach out to touch his shoulder. “You have a job to do still. The first is to make it back to the Resistance alive; the second is to find your missing droid.”

“You said it yourself,” Poe was looking down, his expression decidedly more defeated than I had ever seen it. “Once something is lost out here, there is no hope of getting it back.”

“ _Nearly_ no hope,” I corrected, attempting a smile. “Droids are different. They are valuable on Jakku, as parts anyway.” A small look of horror flashed in Poe’s eyes, and I stammered to erase it. “But, listen, I have a good idea of where your droid might be. It, or… he? She?”

“BB-8,” Poe said, quirking his lips, looking half-amused.

“Okay then, BB-8 is obviously a well-functioning, well-maintained droid, and droids like that fetch a good price. If he was found, he most likely would have been taken to Niima Outpost, which is the largest settlement on Jakku and hosts the only communications tower on the planet. Unkar Plutt owns the most prestigious Concession Stand, and from what I hear, he forks over a lot of goods for droids.”

“Okay then, how do we get there?”

“That might take a while,” I said. “I don’t know precisely where we are. I do, however, have a good idea as to where we aren’t. We aren’t anywhere near Tuanul; everything around us is just sand, no bluffs or rocky ravines. But I imagine we are still western, though still far enough within the reaches to not be close to Niima; you’ll know you’re around there when you see starfighters that crash-landed from the Empire’s demise. I’ll have a better idea once the sun sets and the stars come out.

“Our best bet is to head toward Cratertown, which is my stomping grounds. There’s Ergel’s bar, where we will be able to refresh our supplies, and I have the speeder my dad built at my outpost. It should be able to make it to Niima, even if it is a piece of garbage.”

When I stopped talking, I noticed the way Poe was staring. He had a stupid grin on his face, as if all his worry had suddenly just washed away. How could someone’s smile be _that_ infectious? I wasn’t much of a smiler, not with no one around to ever smile at, but the mere flash of his teeth had me biting my lips to keep my own goofy grin back.

“What?” I asked, feigning annoyance.

“This is just a whole new… you,” he said, gesturing at me with one hand. “Taking charge, observing, calculating our best move. You’re special.”

I was taken aback. I hid my face behind my hand, pretending to be shielding my eyes from the sun’s glare, but really, I was shying away.

“I’m not special,” I said. “I just know how to survive.”

“I’d likely be a dead man if it weren’t for you.”

“Well then,” I said, hoisting my knapsack up closer to my shoulders. “Consider me your walking Jakku survival guide.”

* * *

Poe and I headed in what I hoped was the right direction. With nothing but sand stretching for miles, even someone familiar with Jakku’s landscape would go bonkers. And I was starting to feel the worry. I didn’t know exactly how far we were from Cratertown, or even if it was the nearest settlement. While I groaned on and on in my mind over endless possibilities, dangers, and the accuracy of our route, Poe would initiate occasional conversations to help me to drift back into the present. Most of what he spoke of was reminiscing’s; he told me his best Resistance pilot stories, about his friends and fellow pilots back on base, and of his admiration for General Organa. I allowed his stories to wrap me up and fascinate me until I couldn’t hold back my curiosities any longer.

“So that’s the information the First Order wanted out of you?” I asked during another lapse of conversation. “They wanted a map to Luke Skywalker?”

Poe walked behind me, and so unable to see his face, I wondered why he faltered. But then he said; “Yeah. They’ve been looking for him for a while. Turns out, so has the Resistance.”

“You people lost a bloody Jedi?”

Poe chortled. “Well, it was more like he went into hiding. Something happened to him a while back, something that changed him, made him isolate himself. I’m not entirely sure as to why, but it isn’t my place to know.”

“Secrets built on secrets,” I mused openly.

Poe went silent, and then his hand reached out to grip me by the shoulder. I stopped and turned to face him. He had lost all sense of levity and amusement in his expression. Lips were pressed down just a touch, and his eyebrows creased at the centers.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What for?”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell them,” he added, gripping my other shoulder in turn. “And in the end that bastard Ren got it out of me anyway. I know he did what he did because I wouldn’t give them what they wanted. I know now that he trapped you with me because he wanted me to feel responsible for you, to have my resolve break when they hurt you because of me. It almost did.” I forced myself not to look away, even though his stare was so intense it brought back that hollow ache in my chest. Poe licked his lips. “I’m sorry, I know you probably don’t understand, and I know you might, I guess, resent me for it.”

“Surprisingly, I don’t,” I said. “I actually do get it, in a way. If I had something in my life that was that precious, something that gave me communion, something to hope for, people to care for… I get it. You don’t give up on something like that. At least you shouldn’t.”

Poe stood there a moment, not releasing me, not looking away. His grip on my shoulders wasn’t painful but it was firm, but when his thumbs caressed at my bare skin I finally broke the stare. When I did, I saw something over Poe’s shoulder, and it had me stepping back.

“Shit,” I said.

“What?” Poe turned around, following my gaze.

On the outskirts of our vision, where the setting sun was making ripples of distorted heat across the surface of the sand, a tall, foggy cloud rolled forward. It looked to be standing still, but I knew that once it came closer, it would be dancing along the ground like a thousand raging Banthas.

“Sandstorm,” I said. “Help me.”

Poe and I ran to the next dune and slid down the face of it, our backs to the oncoming storm. I ordered him to search for any large, heavy rocks, but we only came up with four in our vicinity. Watching the progress of the storm as its visage started to grow larger and ever closer, I dug down into the sand, creating a hole about five inches deep and wide enough for the both of us.

“Dump your pack,” I said, and Poe did so, shaking free the contents until they spilled into the small, manmade crater.

Luckily, one half of the parachute was big enough for both of us to huddle under, so I placed one at the bottom of the hole, and the other atop it, securing the ends with the rocks as best as I could. Then, with the sandstorm probably only 50 meters away and the wind picking up velocity, we slipped beneath our makeshift shelter.

“Dig the tips of your boots around the chute,” I said, the shelter slightly quieter and quite a bit cooler. “We don’t want it flying up mid-storm. And tuck the sides in around you as well.”

We filled in the gaps in the chute by pressing our weight atop them. Amid the scramble, Poe and I had linked elbows, and he was half on top of me, pressing the chute in tighter around us with his forearms.

“How long do sandstorms usually last?” Poe asked, breath grazing my ear.

“Better get comfortable.”

It was a sudden torrent around our shelter. Wind tried to rip our covering free, but we kept it down, huddling into the fabric with our faces turned down, away from the sand. Granules pelted the outer chute with a ferocity inequivalent to their size. Poe pressed his strong nose into the crook of my neck and brought the corners of the chute in tighter, locking us in, creating an even more fortified barrier. I was in between his forearms when I realized that his back was probably up against the top of the chute, and he was likely feeling thousands of sharp pellets.

“Are you okay?” I shouted above the roar.

“I’m fine, sweetheart.” He said into my ear, the tip of his nose tickling against the lobe, causing me to shiver. “Don’t worry about me.”

I pressed my cheek against the half of parachute below me, squeezing my eyes shut on instinct, just in case some sand came through. I don’t know how long we were under there. The storm got worse midway through, as if angry at us for evading it for so long. I kept my breathing steady, trying to stuff down the panic at how lightheaded I was already feeling, the oxygen in the small space already stifling. Then, finally, abruptly, it was over.

Poe began to stand first and I followed as he kept the chute upright, letting the sand fall backwards. The whole landscape was swept anew. The storm was still rolling on, heading further east where it would probably slam into Cratertown eventually, the sun intent upon disappearing with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You are all so lovely! Your comments and kudos mean the world! Thank you for being here!


	5. Warmth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For being a desert planet, Jakku gets kriffing cold at night. And how do Reader and Poe deal with the cold? That's right: cuddles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fluff is real, bitches. Also, I get to see The Last Jedi on Thursday and I'm seriously so excited I might barf up my intestines. See you in the hospital, fellow superfans!

It was the middle of the night, at least five hours into darkness, before Poe and I finally reached the pinnacle of exhaustion. The setting sun had taken all the warmth from the landscape, and a world that had once been hot and dry became frigid. Jakku’s climate was one of extremes, and the horrible cold was wearing us down just as fast as its opposite.

“We need rest,” I told Poe, whose teeth had begun to clack.

His once soft face had begun to grow small, thick tendrils of stubble, and the ones below his nose were freezing, tiny icicles at the tips.

“I’m afraid to stop moving,” he admitted, his hands shoved into his armpits for warmth. He had uttered at least five times since sunset how he regretted taking of his jacket when he entered the TIE Fighter cockpit.

“The parachute is pretty well insulated,” I said. “We’ll dig another crater in the sand, for a safe measure and a bit of added heat.”

“I doubt I’ll be able to stop shivering long enough to sleep.”

“You have to try,” I said sternly, slipping the knapsack off my shoulder and beginning to unravel it. “Like I said, we need to rest at some point, and we’re better off sleeping at night than in the day. If we pass out while the sun is high, the heat will drain our bodies of all water reserves. When you wake up, you’ll hallucinate until you die; that is if you aren’t picked off by birds first.”

“Kriffing hell,” Poe said, following my lead to unpack his minimal supplies. We had already drained one water bottle during our trek, but I kept the other safe and deeply buried in my pack. We were practically carrying empty packs, but I would be _damned_ if I got rid of the parachute. “Why do you still live on this force-forsaken planet?”

I didn’t answer immediately, finding that there wasn’t an immediate response that felt like an actual reason. My first thought was that it was just because I had always lived here and I was familiar with it, but that wasn’t really the case. The second was that I had built a small communion of friends and acquaintances, but I doubt they would miss me much, or I them.

Still thinking on it, I began creating our little sleeping pit, the sand dragging beneath my nails as I fought to keep my muscles from seizing up in the cold. Poe was on his knees beside me to help, and I wondered whether his question was rhetorical. I found, however, that I wanted to know the answer for myself.

“Things might not be ideal here,” I finally replied, scraping away and pushing aside handfuls of dirt. “But I figure they could be worse somewhere else. I’m one girl with no family left and enough talents to count on one hand. I have no skill at flying, not the faintest clue how to even begin learning. The only thing I’m truly adept at is surviving, because it’s all that’s ever been required. I’m afraid I’d be on the run in a galaxy I don’t understand.”

Poe took his time with his next words as the crater deepened, the sand beneath emanating the smallest increase of heat that felt holy against our fingers.

“You limit yourself,” he said.

“Even I know what happens to orphan girls who try to flee from their roots. It’s all trouble, some of it worse than others, but none of it I want to take my chances with.”

“Maybe you just need to meet the right people,” Poe said, and when I looked up, I saw him staring directly at me.

I stopped digging. I wanted him to elaborate, but he didn’t.

Allowing my frustration to ebb with time and activity, we set up camp. One half of the parachute beneath, the other atop, we curled between them, keeping the water bottle—still warm from the day—pressed between our bodies. Poe was right; there was nothing easy about falling asleep. Both of us had the top chute tucked around us as tightly as we possibly could, and when we couldn’t stand it any longer, we ducked beneath it, finding the idea of suffocating much more appealing than keeping our heads outside. Still our teeth chattered, and our toes turned to ice in our boots. My back was beginning to ache with how hard I was shivering. _So. Shitting. Cold._

“I’m beginning to hate Luke Skywalker.”

I flipped onto my other side gingerly, to keep my half of the parachute tucked in. Poe had his arms out of the sleeves and folded against his chest on the inside of his shirt. The visual was almost comical, and if I had the lung capacity to laugh without coughing to death, I would have.

“Why?” I said.

“I’m only here because the asshole disappeared.”

“You’re calling a war hero an asshole?”

“Right now? Absolutely.”

I did laugh a little at that, and by a little I mean breathily. Poe somehow managed to smile himself.

“Promise not to hit me.” He said suddenly.

_“Why?”_

“I’m about to suggest something,” he explained, as vaguely as possible, of course. “But before I do you have to promise not to hit me.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Okay?”

A pause, and then: “I think we should strip.”

I felt the shock on my face before I could stop it. For someone who had marked herself as good as survival, I had subconsciously erased that off my checklist. But… I mean… of course I had. I wasn’t going to suggest to this man—one I barely knew and who was without a doubt incredibly attractive—that we share body heat. I had only ever seen one man naked before. The night had been only several after news of my father’s death; I was lonely, and had shot down _three_ cans of Knockback Nectar. There had been an unfamiliar face there: a man who called himself Dreckan, an experienced traveler and scientist from the Republic, sent to different planets to collect biological samples for research on something or other. He’d been handsome enough; dark-haired, tan, well-kempt and chivalrous, with the whitest smile I had ever seen. For some odd reason, he had taken a liking to me as well, and we found ourselves stumbling up the stairs above Ergel’s bar, sloppy in our kisses and our fondling. Looking back, I know I had been searching for something to help me forget my loss, to take me as far away from miners and Cratertown as possible. He had felt like a blessing sent just for my sake.

Unfortunately, idiot that I was, I had panicked when he undressed himself. I’d taken a moment to gawk, of course, at how clean he looked, his body soft and yet hard in all the right places. But that didn’t stop me from running half-naked out of the bar and back to my outpost.

“(Y/N)?” Poe asked, his face a shock of uncertainty. He looked so worried that his shivering had reduced to almost nothing.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I’m just… it’s not an unreasonable request, not at all. You just took me by surprise.”

“I was worried I had offended you or something.”

“No,” I insisted, a little louder than necessary.

“Okay… good.” I saw him bite that lower lip of his again; it was a quirk I was beginning to associate with him, although it seemed to show up in a variety of situations. “Well?”

I didn’t answer. Words themselves felt more awkward than actions, so I just started removing articles of clothing. The space was tight, making me feel even more inexperienced and embarrassed. My shirt caught on my chin and I nearly squeaked when I felt Poe’s fingers reach out to wiggle it past my jawline.

Soon enough, our clothes mingled together within the bubble. I kept my bra and underwear on, not wanting to go _that far_ , and I couldn’t help the briefest shoot of my eyes downward on Poe’s hips where I saw a clothing band. From then on, I forced my gaze to stay up, despite how tempting the line of dark hair slipping down beneath his underwear was. Before I could break my resolve, I turned my back to Poe, feeling a bit more secure that way. It was already warmer within our makeshift bed, whether it was just me or the actual air, I wasn’t sure.

Nothing was said between us, but then Poe wiggled his way forward. I tried to keep my breath even, really, I did, but when his chest touched my back, my heart raced uncontrollably. And when he put his arm around me, I swore it could have exploded.

“Too much?” Poe asked, gentle, soft lips grazing my ear.

I shook my head.

When time passed and the touch we shared turned from surprising to familiar, I felt myself relax into it. He was so, so warm. The arm around me was heavy in a comforting, secure way, especially with the even way he began to breathe as our bodies shared heat. All of the sudden, I was greedy for more contact. Quickly—before I could overthink it—I took his forearm and curled it into me further. His hand clutched around the shoulder furthest from him and I delved the cold tip of my nose against his skin, inhaling all the musk we had carried with us from the First Order to the desert, not caring how it smelled. Poe made a move of his own, sneaking one knee in between mine so that his cold toes curled into the arch of my feet. I shivered.

“Better?” Poe asked after a moment of silence.

“Way better.”

And I realized, in all my life, even out in the desert wilderness with only instincts and a parachute as a blanket, I had never felt so safe.


	6. Cratertown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reader and Poe have finally made it to home base in Cratertown, and though there are a few more hiccups to handle, it’s nothing the best pilot in the Resistance can’t handle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys, I've been sick and the holiday season is flipping NUTS, but I've received so much love and support for this story and I seriously ADORE every single one of you. I get butterflies posting these chapters and the response could not be better. Thank you.

Cratertown was, in and of itself, no more than a trading post, Ergel’s bar, and a stable for luggabeasts. Most of the inhabitants lived on the outskirts of town in their own outposts with their own various skills, some of them even attempting to work from their homes. But the majority were miners, scavengers and delivery workers, servicing different settlements with pricey supplies and a commission strictly adhered to by whatever greedy boss they worked for. Ergel was probably the only businessman I knew who wasn’t out to stomp upon the lesser for a spot in Jakku’s meager hierarchy. And so, he was the first person Poe and I ran to when we finally drug our exhausted, sunburnt bodies into town.

“Ergel!” I shouted over the din of the bar.

I had ordered Poe to stay outside, underneath the southern overhang that would be mostly shadowed and surely uninhabited during this time of day. Bars, no matter how shack-like and dingy they were, attracted any type of species and personality; even First Order sympathizers.

Luckily, almost everyone was hard at work, trying to keep themselves and their families as well fed and alive as possible. The bar was practically empty. I saw two faces I didn’t recognize sitting at the far-left corner, a Melitto and another human, but they didn’t appear to be interested in my sudden appearance.

Ergel waved me over, polishing a stack of cans and stacking them on top of each other as if to see how tall of a structure he could make before it fell. Poor guy was probably bored out of his mind.

“You’re back,” he said when I reached the counter, its surface being pieces of junk metal sautered together, the linked ridges still coarse even after so much use. “Find anything that might catch a nice meal? Maybe even a credit?”

He still thought I was returning from my mining endeavor near Tuanul. For force sakes, so much had happened in so little time, I almost forgot the reason why I left my tiny Jakku settlement in the first place.

“No,” I said, and he made a grunt of sympathy. “Listen, I need your help.”

“I’m a bartender, (Y/N); I don’t know the first thing about mining.”

“This isn’t about mining.”

I leaned over the counter conspiratorially, and watched as the small space between Ergel’s bushy white eyebrows crinkled.

“This is important, Ergel,” I said, lowering the tone of my voice. “There’s some deep shit behind me, and you’re the only person on this force-forsaken planet I have left to trust.”

“What in sandstorm’s name is going on, (Y/N)?”

“First,” I held up a finger close to his face, so close that his nearly white eyes started to go cross from looking at it. “I need you to promise me you won’t say a word, not to anyone.”

I must have let the seriousness of the situation show, because he nodded mutely.

“Back door,” I gestured to the direction with my head.

“Back in a moment, gentleman,” Ergel called out to the Melitto and his companion.

Around the long island with the metal frame, I followed him, through a short hallway where he kept his stores of liquor and Knockback—which was basically blended algae scraped off rocks from the south—and then outside an old wooden door. Poe was sitting on the other side, looking eternally grateful for the respite, his rugged jawline tilted up into the shadow of the overhang. He looked up at Ergel and me when we stepped through the door, the bartender closing it behind him.

“Ergel,” I said, “This is Poe Dameron; Resistance Pilot.”

Ergel looked back and forth between the two of us, his expression growing more and more concerned. “Resistance? Kriffing hell, (Y/N), I told you to avoid Tuanul! Why would you get mixed up in a war we have nothing to do with?”

“It wasn’t by choice,” I said, swallowing heavily when I felt Poe stand near, his chest just grazing my shoulder. “But that doesn’t matter now. We escaped from the First Order, and they probably followed our crash-sight, and anyway they’re probably looking for us and a droid that holds a very, very important map…”

“Have you seen a droid around here by chance?” Poe intervened. “He’s a BB-series astromech, orange and white, a bit of a know-it-all sometimes but sweet as can be.”

“Son,” Ergel held out a hand. “All of that just went straight over my head. We don’t do all that fancy stuff around here; here, a droid is a droid, although you can usually tell a good one from the next. And I’m sorry, but no,” I heard Poe sigh in defeat over my shoulder. “I’d have heard if there stumbled in something that special into town. I tend a bar; folks love to talk to bartenders.”

“I figure it’s likely he was picked up and taken to Niima,” I said. “But we absolutely need to get him before the First Order does.”

“You serious about this, (Y/N)?” Ergel asked, staring me point-blank in the eyes.

I nodded. I was sure; I was going to help Poe get back to the Resistance with his droid if it killed me. Ren had been right about a few things, one especially being that when I stepped forward for Poe in Tuanul, I was involved, whether I liked it or not. And in the last few days, I had grown to respect the pilot as much as I had ever respected anyone, including my late father.

“Alright then,” Ergel said, rolling his shoulders back, his old spine popping with the motion. “What can I do to help?”

“Keep Poe upstairs in the guestroom. I’m going to head to my outpost and hopefully get my speeder running.”

“Shoot,” Ergel ran a burly, tanned hand through his cropped hair, looking off as if to grab the rest of his words from thin air. “I forgot to tell you, with the way you ran into the bar…”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” I said amidst his slow, stumbling sentence.

“I visited your outpost while you were gone to make sure everything was still untouched. You don’t have much, I know, but someone found the speeder hiding beneath the pile of scraps and canvas. Didn’t steal the whole thing—probably couldn’t get it running—but they emptied the fuel tank and took the carburetor.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I groaned.

Poe was, surprisingly, less ill-set with the news. “Do you have a mechanic stationed here?”

“Sort of. Goes by the name of Bowdlen; he does alright. His labor isn’t cheap though. Has to make a living of some sort, and mostly gets his business from the occasional passerby needing a tune-up or sending parts through merchants coming from Niima.”

Poe flashed me a grin. “I think we’ll be alright.”

“Why? You a mechanic?”

“If something is made of bolts, gas, and metal, it’s practically putty in my hands.”

* * *

Turns out, Poe had enough credits stuffed in his sock to cover what was required. I was given the grand duty of returning to my outpost to push my shabby speeder to Bowlden’s, who was able to canvas his hoard of miscellaneous parts and find what we needed. Poe remained upstairs at Ergel’s and Ergel continued to run his bar, filing patrons in and out while a First Order fugitive hid above their heads. My poor speeder hovered—not quite straight—in the air as I pushed it forward across the open expanse of the settlement, a tank of oil and a couple of clinking, mechanical bits in the parachute bag I kept draped across my shoulder. Time was wasting, and although I didn’t know how long it would take to get the machine running, I figured Poe would get it done faster than anyone else.

Checking for onlookers—and finding none in sight—I wrapped my way around Ergel’s, my arms aching from pushing the blasted metal beast from one outskirt of town to the other. It still hovered, which was a relief, but it sure hadn’t offered any momentum. Poe was waiting on the other side of the backdoor, the shadow of the overhang continuing to stretch outward as the sun began another descent.

“Damn,” was the first thing he said, cocking his head at the speeder. “She’s… a mess.”

“I’m not adept at maintenance.”

“I can tell,” he joked.

I sat against the back wall for hours after, watching Poe tinker with what little he had to work with. Ergel had the most basic set of tools hiding in a box beneath his bar, but Poe had insisted they would work fine. He was proving himself right. He hadn’t tried to start the thing yet, and I couldn’t tell improvement from potential disaster, but the confident way in which he worked told me he was getting the job done. There was no swearing, no jarring, confused motions in his hands. Everything he did was precise and—dare I say—loving, as if this was just another day on the job and there was nothing he would rather be doing.

“I can teach you how to do all this, someday.” He said, out of the blue.

I had been dozing, my head lolling against the side of the building, and his voice sent surprised jolts through my whole body.

“Sorry,” I said, blinking reality back into focus. “What did you say?”

“I can teach you how to fix these types of things; speeders, ships, X-Wings especially. You might even be able to tune up BB-8 when he needs it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ll teach you. Y’know, when we get back.”

He stopped for a minute, wiping down his hands with an already dirty cloth. His shirt clung to him where sweat stains seeped through, and holy hell… I never thought sweat could be so sexy. I realized I was gawking for a second or two too long when I looked up and saw Poe regarding me, almost curious.

“We?” I said, feeling stupid enough as it was. “Are you… are you inviting me to go with you? To the Resistance?”

“Sounds like it,” he quirked a smile, obviously finding my hesitation amusing.

“Stop it,” I said.

“Stop what?”

“Stop making light of it. I want to know if you’re serious.”

“I’m dead serious,” he said, dropping the cloth and taking a few steps toward me. “You said you didn’t want to leave Jakku for fear that you would have nowhere to go, that others might find you and harm you in a galaxy you know little about. It may sound surprising, but you’ll be safe at base, safer than you’d be anywhere else in the galaxy.”

“I don’t just want to be safe, Poe,” I said, rubbing grains of sand between my fingers. “I want to have a purpose, to feel like I add something. What can I add to your Resistance?”

“Plenty.”

“Like what? Give me one example.”

“Survival,” he said, without hesitation. “A lot of our members don’t have the type of experience you do. They haven’t navigated climates, and they certainly wouldn’t be able to survive on the landscape and a couple, meager supplies like you can. You can teach them to be better equipped to handle whatever is thrown at them.”

When I didn’t respond at first, he knelt in front of me. “You act on instinct, even if you regret it in hindsight, but good instincts are what every fighter needs. You were thrown from the only world you’ve ever known into a jail cell within an hour, and you held your own, taking every moment a step at a time and even taking care of me. It takes months of conditioning for most of our members to learn how to cope with capture and torture. But you have that natural grit, that instinct that is so well-ingrained in you. You are a damned poster girl for the Resistance, (Y/N).”

Instinct. Instinct was what told me to scoot forward until I was hugging him, head tucked underneath his chin, nose pressed against his collarbone. Instinct brought tears to my eyes, when in other times I would have been too ashamed to let them fall. Instinct was what made me tell him yes, that I had nothing left on Jakku and that somehow, in some weird twist of fate, I felt like I had found something with him and his fight. And I wasn’t going to let myself lose that, not when instinct led me to find it in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little trivia for my true Star Wars nerds, Ergel, the Bartender, is a real character in the universe. He appears in the Aftermath novels.


	7. The Guestroom Above Ergel's Bar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reader and Poe take a night to rest before continuing their search for BB-8 in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second to last chapter of this story, and by far the most, ahem, thirsty? Anyway, it's possible I might do a Part 2 to this little fic, but it kinda depends on my brain. It's a manic, unpredictable thing. Hope you enjoy!

The sun was gone before Poe could finish the repairs on the speeder, and despite our need for haste, I was grateful for a respite. It had been nearly a week since I’d been able to sleep well, and Poe, despite worrying for the fate of his droid, was practically dead on his feet. We needed our rest, and Ergel was kind enough to offer us the guestroom above his bar for the night, where the bed was actually a bed and not a tied-up sheet stuffed with sand and bits of Thissermount mane. There were even two basins of lukewarm water provided for a sponge bath, and I went first while Poe waited outside the room, scrubbing away what I could. The water I wrung out into the basin was nearly black from a coat of sand, sweat, and whatever I had taken with me from the Finalizer. I didn’t want to have to put my putrid clothes back on, and so decided to scrub them off in the basin as well, determining that wet and semi-clean was better than dry clothes that smelt like Bantha fodder. Still stark naked, I heard a knock on the guestroom door that made me jump.

“(Y/N)?” It was Poe. “I have something for you. Ergel apparently ran down to your outpost while you bathed and brought back a set of clothes.”

Ergel. He was probably the one thing on this entire planet I would miss when I left. I would have to say goodbye in the morning before we left, although I still wasn’t sure how I would go about it. He had stood in as a bit of a surrogate father, without anyone asking him to, or any expectations of his own.

“Okay,” I said, tip-toeing to the door, my skin already springing up gooseflesh.

I hid on the other side of the door, opened it a crack, and motioned for Poe to hand me the articles. He wiggled them through the small opening, our fingers touched, and I quickly released the door. Did he know I was naked? Probably not. A small, devious part of me wanted to make a game of it, but I was too shy to follow through.

Gratefully, I slipped on dry, clean clothes, the only other pair I owned. And I felt marvelous.

“What about you?” I asked, after pulling the new shirt down my head and smoothing it across my stomach.

“Ergel is lending me something,” he said through the door. “I imagine they’ll be too big, but I’ll take it.”

We switched off, me leaning on the door, trying to keep myself from imagining what was happening on the other side. The customers downstairs were noisy, so I couldn’t hear anything. Probably a good thing; if I heard clothes dropping or water dripping, it woul land my mind in some places dirtier than my old bathwater. I played with my fingers, drumming them against one another, finding myself getting hot and bothered for no reason, other than that Poe Dameron was probably naked on the other side of a metal door and I truly wanted nothing more in that moment than to touch him. I’d been craving it since we laid together just the previous night, where I had woken up in the same spot, his arm wrapped around me, cradling me like I was something to hold onto. I hadn’t felt this needy even when I almost had sex with Dreckan, and that was with a crazy amount of alcohol in my system. If I were playing it safe, I ought to go back to my outpost now, before Poe and I were side by side with too much privacy and a bed beneath us. But I didn’t want to play it safe. I wanted to let whatever happened happen, even if it was nothing, because knowing that I could have run from _something_ was an option far less desirable.

Wrapped up in my thoughts and the rowdiness happening below, I didn’t have time to react when Poe opened the door and I fell back without it. When I looked up, Poe was stooped above me, shirtless, the waistband of his pants hanging low so that the rigid space between his oblique muscles and hips showed.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It’s fine,” I pushed myself up, trying to breathe the flush out of my skin. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

I was bringing myself up off the floor when I felt Poe grab my hands in his and yank me upward. He gave such a tug that I stumbled into him, ripping my hands from his grasp to break my fall against his chest. My palms laid flat against him, feeling his skin, the leftover chill from the water, even the bounce of his heart which felt oddly close in quickness to mine.

“Sorry again,” he said, with a grin that spoke volumes of how unapologetic he was.

“Really?” I said, testing the waters. “I don’t think you are.”

“Yeah, true; I’m really not.”

He said those words so lowly that it made my whole mouth go dry. Whatever comeback I had was swallowed up when he kissed me. However needy I felt outside the door, Poe doubled it, tripled it in mere moments. His lips were a wildfire against mine, unapologetic. He gripped me tightly, but it wasn’t tight enough, not when I felt like I wanted to meld into him completely. Whatever fear had turned me off from Dreckan was abolished, and I was kissing Poe back, hard, sloppy, biting that lower lip of his that he loved to chew on himself. I made him moan, the sound like a sigh through his nose. The mere fact that I did that made my fever grow.

A moment later Poe had his hands on my butt and was yanking my thighs upward. I helped him, straddling those half-naked hips so that he could lead me to the bed and I could focus on lips, so smooth and rich under my tongue. My back flopped against the mattress, but I didn’t break the seal I had on him, yanking him down further, threading my fingers through his messy curls so that he had no choice but to press his face further into mine. He responded better than I ever could have hoped, the tugging on his hair egging him on even more.

“That feels so good,” he said, the words themselves just as addicting as his kisses. “You feel so good.”

When I melted, he took over, sucking on my tongue in a way that felt so dirty but so incredible at the same time. I wanted to dissolve into the sensations, the way his stubble stabbed at my chin and cheeks, the weight he put into my palms when he threaded our fingers together and pressed my hands into the mattress on either side of my head. I was panting freely when his lips left mine and he turned my head to the side, nibbling gently on my earlobe, kissing down my neck. I pressed up into him and he took the opportunity to slide and arm behind my back and hold me there, my clothed breasts perking up into his bare chest and the sensitive space between my collarbones bare for him to suck against.

“Have you ever been touched like this?” he asked, breathing the words against my skin.

I shook my head.

“Have you ever felt like this before?”

I shook my head again. “No.”

“You want to know something terrible?” he laid me flat on the bed again, taking a breather to look me in the eyes.

I looked back, unafraid. “What?”

“I’m glad.”

I nodded, telling him simply that I understood. “What about you?”

He smoothed the hair away from my face, letting his fingers dance across my cheek. “I’ve had sex, but even in the act it hasn’t held a candle to this.” His touched trailed down to where the collar of my shirt ended, my cleavage just an inch from his fingers. “I told you, baby. You’re special.”

Every word added that much more to my fire, to an intensity that left me so suddenly fearless, and with all my might I flipped him over until I was straddling his waist from above and he was lying beneath. I felt powerful, for the first time, and it was so. _Fucking. Good._

I started at his throat, slowly, inching around, doing everything I could think of to get him to want me more. I brought a knee in between his legs and stroked at his groin with it, dragging the leg up and then down again, feeling just how hard he truly was.

_“Dammit,”_ he whispered.

I continued to let my knee stroke him, pulling at his locks to further expose his neck. With every stroke I was becoming more and more daring, and a burst of inspiration had me licking his neck from adam’s apple to the tip of his chin, scraping my tongue against his stubble. When I was about to return to his lips he stopped me by pressing two fingers between our mouths. I pulled back, confused when his fingers stayed against my lips, nudging them apart. It took me a moment to catch on, but when I did, I drew them into my mouth.

“There’s a girl,” Poe said when I went up and down with my mouth, curling my tongue between the digits, sucking greedily on his skin. “You’re a natural.”

I was surprised how much hotter I felt just sucking on his fingers, relishing in the intimacy, the salt on his hands and the callouses that felt hard and ridged against my tongue. A shockingly loud moan blew out my mouth and around his fingers when he reached down to cup me between my legs, swirling his palm. My knees buckled, the one stroking him slipping down at a much faster pace, making him gasp.

“You don’t have birth control implants on this planet, do you?” he asked, pulling his fingers away. I pinched them between my teeth on the way out, and he closed his eyes, breath increasing in intensity.

“No,” I said, trying not to sound too disappointed.

“That’s fine,” he said. “We’ll take care of that when we get back to base. For now, we should get some rest.”

His words hit me like a brick. At first, I felt angry, then sad, then embarrassed at myself. I continued to sit on him as he propped himself up on his elbows, not breaking eye contact.

“Sweetheart,” he said, pressing his forehead against mine. “I would love nothing more than to continue, but I don’t think that’s what either of us really want. I want to feel all of you, and I want you to feel all of me.”

I sighed, leaning into his forehead. “I know. Me too.”

He pulled back so that I could see his eyes, see the uneven, fiendish smile on his face. “When we get back to the Resistance and we can do this properly, trust me; I’m going to make you feel everything. You’re going to scream and be sore for days, and I’m going to relish every last second of it.”

“You promise?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“I promise.”


	8. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reader and Poe discover what happened to BB-8 and Finn, and with a great deal of hesitation, the reader attempts to say her goodbyes to Jakku.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter of this little fic! Since I am considering a Part 2, love to hear your ideas on what you would like to see in it, including but not limited to timeline (as in coinciding with TLJ, TFA, or afterward, etc...), relationship stuff, and whatever you would really be interested in. Getting opinions would really help to formulate a plotline. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the final chapter! I have loved this story and loved the readers who have said so many wonderful things and helped move everything along!

It was the most comfortable part of Jakku’s days: early sunrise, when the cold was beginning to abate but the sun’s rays weren’t yet harsh. Everything was as soft as the desert planet could be, a blinking haze that was there and gone too quickly. It was at this time that Poe finished his work on the speeder. Ergel was awake early, as always, preparing for the upcoming customers with the languorous ease of having done the same thing every day for years. When I watched through the door in the back, flipping stools rightside up off the tabletops, it hit me that soon my days would be fresh. I wouldn’t wake up every morning with the same dread of getting my hands dirty, only to be rewarded with nothing.

The goodbye was quick and awkward. I’d never seen Ergel’s emotions roused beyond a goodhearted chuckle, and he didn’t disappoint with our final encounter. Whatever we felt was kept in a quick hug and admonitions of safety; anything else would have been beyond two Jakku residents. Even if it didn’t seem right, and even if we would have liked it to be different, everything came and went with the wind on the sand. It was all we knew. I hoped, while I watched Poe make his final adjustments on my poor excuse of a vehicle, that something might finally be concrete.

Once the sun made its last leg beyond distant dunes, we left Cratertown. I drove the speeder, nagged by the assumption that Poe was holding himself back from correcting my every move. He rode behind, uncharacteristically silent. He was likely just focused on finding BB-8, always scanning the landscape as we went, but I liked to think that he respected my need for quiet. The goodbye with Ergel was a simple thing, easy to comprehend and accomplish. I was afraid that saying goodbye to Jakku would be a far more difficult process.

I wanted to take the lead and feel myself hovering over the plain, undisturbed sands, with my hand urging the machine along and my decision kicking up dirt. I was doing this for myself, and I would leave that knowledge behind, even if the tracks were temporary.

* * *

Poe immediately contacted the Resistance base once our comlink connected with the communications tower. He briefly informed them of his situation, of where he would be, and that he was bringing a recruit along. That sent my pulse rocketing against my skin.

I parked the speeder on the outskirts of Niima, hoping that a scavenger wouldn’t pick it out and take it for themselves, before figuring it shouldn’t matter anyhow. Let the scavenger’s pick it apart; hopefully, it would buy someone a good meal or two. We started forward, Poe with a wrapped cloth—courtesy of Ergel—around his head to keep his face partially cloaked. However, once we were amid the settlement, it was obvious The First Order had already come and gone. Scrap-metal—with the charred remnants of Tie Fighter shots blown across the surfaces—skittered around Niima. There were deep craters in the sand from an aerial onslaught. Unkar’s junkyard, a collection of ships, gears, and weapons he _inherited_ or illegially swideled, was an even bigger wreck than I’d heard it to be. One of his best ships was blown to bits, and another had apparently been stolen, according to bits and pieces of gossip.

“I’m grateful for a great many things,” Poe said, blinking around at the wreckage. “But shit am I happy that that comm tower wasn’t shot down.”

I nodded. “We need to drive the speeder to Unkar’s Concession Stand.”

“Alright. Mind explaining why?”

“Because we need to get some information,” I said, looking over at him. “And around here, it doesn’t come cheap.”

* * *

“I will never forget what that stupid, _ungrateful_ scavenger girl did to me!”

Unkar was livid, so much so that I nearly regretted bringing the speeder along as payment. He may have offered up his information for free, considering how spurned he was. The Crolute was still behind a barred window, muttering under his breath and screaming over his shoulder every now and again to anyone who would listen.

“First she refuses to sell that droid, like a fool, and then-"

“A droid?” Poe stepped forward, keeping his face within the cloth and a pair of goggles over his eyes. “What kind of droid?”

“The one the fuckin’ First Order would have paid for! That’s what kind!”

“What happened?” I asked. “Where did the droid and your scavenger girl end up?”

“What’s it to you?” Unkar asked, leaning a blobby pink forearm down against the counter. “Why would you care?”

Although the First Order probably thought that Poe and I were dead, along with their defecting stormtrooper, I still stalled. Giving Unkar too much information might bite us in the ass. He was obviously willing to sell anything, if it gave him a shiny credit in return.

“Why we care is none of your concern, pal.” Poe said, folding his arms. “We’re here to buy information; not be scrutinized.”

“Ah, a negotiator,” Unkar grabbed either side of the metal plates lining down his front, stretching to full height. “Who says this speeder is worth what I have to say?”

“You flatter yourself too much,” Poe said lazily, as if he had bartered a thousand times before. “Besides, this speeder has been refitted with a new carburetor, not to mention entirely scanned for product replacement. The engine has been scrubbed, the balance has been perfected, and I can almost guarantee just with a glance that she will run better than anything you have stashed in your junkyard.”

Unkar regarded him heavily, drumming thick, sausage-like fingers against the countertop. I kept my face as impassive as possible. If he was trying to get a read on how desperate we were, I didn’t intend to give anything away.

“I respect your confidence, stranger,” Unkar said finally, slapping a palm on the table with so much ferocity it made me twitch. “A scavenger girl of mine happened across a droid a couple of days ago. I recognized it as the one the First Order was looking for, so I offered to pay her for it. Handsomely.

“Of course, considering the brat she is, she refused to sell. I tried to get it through alternative measures, you understand, but that’s when the kriffing First Order nearly blew up Niima. Girl and the droid got away on one of my ships,” Unkar spit, a low grumble in his throat. “Stole it from me, along with a dark-skinned human in dark clothes I’d never seen before who stumbled in nearly screaming for water not an hour before. Ungrateful! After everything I’ve done for her!”

I turned to Poe. “Do you think…?”

“I do,” he said, nodding. “Finn.”

We turned from Unkar’s Concession Stand without another word, although we heard the questioning calls that followed. As we walked on, we passed scavenger stations, with a few of the poor souls Unkar ruled over scrubbing away at bits of scraps. Just looking at them had me feeling guilty; why did I deserve a ticket out? Yet again, most of them wouldn’t know how to survive outside of this lawless, unforgiving planet. They had built roots here, regardless of how bitter they were.

“BB-8 and Finn are out there somewhere,” Poe said, once we were out of earshot. The sun beat down mercilessly on us without the bit of shade the stand provided. “Hopefully still out of First Order hands.”

“They’ve made it this far,” I said. “It’s miraculous, to be honest with you.”

“I would share the news to have our supporters across the galaxy watch out for them and the ship they stole, but I don’t trust that this communications tower is secure.”

“I can almost guarantee you it’s not.” I swiped a hand across my forehead, wishing I had more water. “What’s the ETA on your rescue party?”

“ _Our_ rescue party?” Poe grinned. “They’ll be fast. Jess will be flying point to get us home, I’m sure of it.”

“Jess?”

“A member of my squadron,” he said. “Great friend, better pilot. You’ll get to know everyone soon enough.”

* * *

The Resistance _was_ fast, obviously eager to get their best pilot back. When the transport ship landed on the coordinates sent through to the comlink, a starfighter named Jessika Pava came running out the transport as soon as the hatch docked, ran to Poe, and embraced him without thought or hesitation. I was taken aback at first. Firstly, because I didn’t realize the Jess he had been referring to to be a woman, and secondly because it made me feel all the more an outsider, one just trying to fit in and wondering whether or not her efforts would ever come to fruition. I was already raw on the inside. Leaving Jakku meant embracing the hope of a better life, a more purposeful one, but I’d never kept my faith in hope. Trusting Poe was the small push I needed to jump in, but was it enough?

“You must be (Y/N),” Jess said, releasing Poe and holding out a hand for me to shake. She was a petite woman, with deep-set eyes that were as black as Onyx stone and a round face that gave her the look of someone friendly. I took her hand, forcing a small smile.

“That’s me,” I said.

“You’ll have to tell me what happened to you two,” she said, looking up at me with her hands on her hips. “You both look like shit.”

“Look it, feel it,” Poe said, coming to stand beside me. “We’ll spill the details later. But before that, we need to send word to the Resistance; BB-8 is MIA.”

“We’ll get eyes looking out for him,” Jess said. “For now, let’s get out of here.”

They both turned to leave but I felt my boots stick to the sand, unwilling to move. Jakku was sucking me in, refusing to let me leave, even though there were no sinking fields in this area. I can’t do this, was the only thought I had, replayed over and over until the sweat was coming from a heat within my body, a fearful, flaming doubt. Jess turned questioningly when I wouldn’t move, and Poe stopped in his tracks. He said something to her, so softly I couldn’t distinguish the words, and when the woman continued toward the transport, Poe backtracked to me. When he got close enough for me to see his eyes—finally visible without those maddening goggles—I looked away.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I can’t do this.”

“Of course you can.”

“No,” I insisted, shaking my head, looking off and back toward Niima. “You don’t understand Poe, I just… I can’t.”

“Okay then help me understand,” I felt his large, calloused hands on my cheeks turning my face toward his. “Tell me why.”

I swallowed, tasting the dirt that coated the insides of my mouth. “I don’t think I can ever be like you, like Jessika. There’s so much history already, so much war and I’ve been nothing but an outsider in it until just a few days ago. Being a survivor is one thing, but a warrior? I’m not like you, Poe.”

Poe shifted his weight, worrying his lower lip again. It went against his usual character, against the emotions he chose to show, but I thought he might be genuinely concerned, maybe even afraid. He wasn’t blinking, just staring at me, whatever wheels that constantly turned in his mind building up steam.

“Who ever said you needed to be like me?” he finally said, offering a small smile, although the worried creases between his eyebrows remained. “It will be a transition, I won’t lie. A huge, life-changing one. Things will be difficult. You’ll be putting your life on the line for something that you haven’t had a stock in until recently; I get it. But I just need you to trust me; I need you to hope.”

I closed my eyes and let out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know how.”

“You’ll learn,” when I didn’t respond immediately, Poe stepped closer, threading his fingers through my hair along the side of my head and interlocking them behind. “Baby I’m not leaving you here.”

“I’ve done fine on my own.”

“You’ve barely lived,” he said, a bit of an edge to his voice that I hadn’t heard since the interrogation with Ren. “We’ve been through hell together, we’ve survived just off one another, and you think I’m just going to leave you behind? The Resistance is a family because when people go through shit together it creates a bond that doesn’t just go away. You are my family now,” he pressed his forehead against mine, digging the pads of his fingers into the base of my skull. “I can’t leave you. You lose so many fucking people in this business; I can’t lose you too.”

If I dug deep enough, if I let go of the restraints, I knew I felt the same. But it would take a while to get there.

“Do you trust me?” he asked, placing a quick peck on my lips.

I did, underneath it all. There was a small enough part of me that wanted to melt into him, to let go of every reserve and leave it behind. The sun hadn’t burned everything away. Somewhere, I was more than just a piece of Jakku.

“Yes,” I said.

He swept me into his arms and before I could squeak in surprise he kissed me. The hands once interlaced behind my head connected at the small of my back, pushing me into him until my hips met his. My grip automatically shifted from the front of his shirt to the back of his neck, aligning our bodies and allowing me to touch the waves of his hair I adored so much. Poe’s tongue was in my mouth, his lips nearly swallowing mine whole and his teeth colliding with mine in a way that was both shocking and pleasurable at the same time. Every bit of me was fire. For the first time in my life I felt truly needed. Poe kissed me like I was a mirage come to life, drinking me up, sucking my tongue into his mouth and sliding his hands down until he could grip my ass.

Poe hummed into my mouth, taking my bottom lip between his teeth and pulling gently before releasing it. “You have no idea how badly I want to get back to base right now.”

I rubbed my nose against his. “Is this your way of trying to convince me to come with you?”

“Maybe a little?”

“You’re terrible.”

He pulled his head away to look at me, and to ensure I could look at the mischievous grin on his face. “No, what’s terrible are the things I’m going to do to you when we get there.”

I didn’t know whether to be panicked or ridiculously turned on; probably, a mixture of both.

“ _Dameron!”_ Jess called from the transport. “Stop sucking off the girl’s face and get on the ship!”

Poe’s grin only widened. “She would never do that; she likes me too much.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Ready?” he asked, gripping my hand.

I looked back, fingers threaded through his, a piece of the future in my hand and a vision of the past in my eyes. The sun’s rays painted quivering waves of heat above the horizon, and the reflections bounced back into the sky. It was strangely beautiful, the violent reds and oranges of a sunset, perhaps the last I would see on Jakku. Poe gripped me tighter, a reminder that he was still there. I was surprised that deep within me I began to feel less turmoil and a little more peace. I had fought so long to stay alive; but the galaxy was bigger than survival, and I wanted to know more than hunger, more than heat, more than just the speck of myself.

And I wanted Poe Dameron.

Within a breath, I squeezed his hand in return and faced him, away from the sun.

“Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep watching my profile! Another Poe Dameron fic is coming your way very, very soon! xo


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